GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ.
President of Mexico (1876-1880 and 1884-1909).
The scientific party, intoxicated by an orgy of utilitarianism, has not sought to arrest the great plutocracy of the North by means of European alliances.
Unity, wealth, peace: these are the magnificent features of modern Mexico, the admirable work of the Dictatorship. The Yankee peril; lay dogmas which fetter intellectual evolution; a level of utilitarian mediocrity without ideals of expansion, without culture, without the true Latin characteristics; popular ignorance and fresh revolutions: these are the disturbing aspects of this long period of tutelage. If the country triumphs over the obscure agents of dissolution, the influence of Porfirio Diaz will be as durable as that of Pedro II. or Portales or Rosas.
[[1]] Memoires autographes, Paris, 1824, p. 28.
[[2]] The brilliant Mexican historian Bulnes states that French intervention was "the revolt of Napoleon III. against the Monroe doctrine" (El verdadero Juarez, Mexico, 1904, p. 816).
[[3]] Bulnes, ibid., p. 101.
[[4]] Diaz pacified Mexico by means of the weapon employed by Rosas—fear. Bandits and revolutionaries were shot. His victims are said to have numbered 11,000.